Researchers
Amir G. Moghadam
PhD candidate
Eric Chiu
PhD candidate
Eric Tseng
PhD candidate
Farshad Murtada
PhD candidate
Kousha Kamal
PhD candidate
(co-supervised with Dr. Kim Tsoi)
Leo Chou
Principal Investigator
Meghan Rothenbroker
PhD candidate
Ryan Lee
PhD candidate
Shana Alexander
PhD candidate
Travis Douglas
PhD candidate
Alumni
Abdulmateen Aderinto
MASc (2022)
Associate Scientist
Vital Bio
Ian Chen
PDF (2021)
Scientist
Shennon Biotechnologies
Sachin Davis
MASc (2022)
PhD candidate
UPenn Bioengineering
Stuti Joshi
MASc (2022)
Applications Scientist
PacBio
Wendy Wang
Postdoc (2023)
Postdoctoral Fellow
Broad Institute / Harvard University
Work and fun
Leo receives the Ontario Early Researcher Award for work on biomedical applications of DNA nanotechnology
Chou lab is one of 54 projects awarded by the Government of Ontario via the Early Researcher Award. Read the official press release here.
Chou lab welcomes Dr. Elisha Krieg from IPF Germany for a seminar and visit!
Dr. Krieg discusses his work on programmable polymer materials powered by DNA and their applications in cell culture as well as nucleic acid diagnostics. Welcome Dr. Krieg! Here’s a photo of Dr.
Leo and Aereas hosts the Toronto virtual hub for the EMBO ImmunoBiophysics symposium
We joined remotely to the conference located in France, along with U Oxford, UK; IISc in Bengaluru, India; and Institut Curie, Paris.
Meghan and Eric also gave talks on their research projects examining lymph node trafficking of DNA origami and tuning DNA origami immunogenicity
Chou and Tsoi labs awarded Canadian Cancer Society - Disruptive Innovation Grant!
Cancer care is increasingly personalized, because no two cancer patients are the same. This is a huge challenge for clinical care, especially for patients with rare cancers, because the standard of care don’t work for them. We envision solving this problem through personalized medicine, by testing drugs on many patient disease ‘avatars’ and identifying the right drug or drug combinations for the right patient. These avatars are made of fragments of patient biopsies cultured in “jelly-like” scaffolds. These artificial environments will be crucial to maintain tissues outside the patient’s body. Our goal in this grant is to find such scaffold designs that maximize the viability of the tissues ex vivo so that drug screening is feasible.
Amir, Meghan, and Shana receipients of the 2025 EPIC Doctoral Awards
See news coverage here. Congratulations everyone!
Our DNA origami immune complexes article has been published online today in ACS Nano
Travis and Shana’s on synthetic immune complexes is now published online in the journal ACS Nano. They showed that patterned antigens on DNA origami can lead to the formation of immune complexes with distinct (and programmable) structures and cell uptake. Congratulations team!
Farshad Murtada one of six BME PhD students to win National CGS-D Scholarship
Congratulations Farshad, and all BME CGS-D awardees. See UofT news coverage here
Our article on rewireable DNA computing building blocks has been published online today in JACS
Ryan’s work on combining PCR synthesis, solid-phase immobilization, and microfluidics to create DNA computers from reusable building blocks is now published online in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. A big thanks to Prof. Nadanai Laohakunakorn and his lab at University of Edinburgh for help with microfludics. Congratulations Ryan!
Chou and the Treanor labs awarded a 5-year CIHR grant on using DNA origami to study B cells
see the CIHR grant database
Our origamiFISH-Flow article has been published online today in Small
Shana, Wendy, Eric, and Travis’ work on combining highly sensitive HCR in situ hybridization with flow cytometry to detect DNA origami in cells and tissues is now published online in the journal Small. Congratulations team!
Celebratory lab brunch
Brunch to celebrate recent CIHR project grant proposal approved for funding
Lab holiday dinner!
Photo from the group’s holiday dinner at Amano Trattoria with a custom set menu. Thanks to Travis for organizing!
Lab outing for Leo’s birthday!
Photo from today’s group luncheon at Cottage Cheese, having delicious urban indian cuisine (minus Eric, who’s hard at work with experiments!!)
Our review article has been published today in Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews
Shana, Amir, and Meghan’s article on addressing the in vivo delivery of nucleic-acid nanostructures has been published online in the jounral Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews. Congratulations to all!
Chou lab members presenting at the annual ToBE departmental symposium
Great job to Eric and Shana on their poster presentations, as well as Ryan and Meghan on their oral presentations. Good representation from the group. A big congratulations goes to Meghan as well for winning best oral presentation in the Molecular Stream!
Travis finishing his first (of many?) marathon race!
All smiles at the finish line!
Travis presenting his research at the Foundations of Nanoscience conference
Travis presenting his research on FcR targeting nanoparticles at FNANO 2023 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Also did some skiing on the side!
Farewell to Wendy
Wendy will be joining the Broad Institute and Harvard University as a postdoctoral fellow. All the best Wendy!
2022 holidays lab group photo
Happy holidays from the Chou lab!
Wendy, Shana presents at the annual Medicine by Design symposium
Wendy delivers a talk in a packed auditorium on her development of origamiFISH, a method for visualizing DNA nanostructures in biological samples. Shana also gave a poster presentation on how she is advancing this technology further to enable broader applications. Chou lab well-represented at the annual MbD symposium!
Eric, Shana, and Travis present at the annual PRiME symposium
Travis gives a lightning talk as one of the eight 2022 PRiME fellows, while Eric and Shana discusses their work on using origamiFISH-Flow to study DNA origami - immune interactions
Leo gives an invited talk at ACS regional meeting
Leo gives an invited talk on the OrigamiFISH project at ACS NE Regional Meeting in Rochester, New York
Mid-night stroll through Toronto’s Nuit Blanche
Group pic from Nuit Blanche, Toronto’s all-night celebration of contemporary art. The installation is called “synapse” so kind of fitting we took our photo in front of it
Chou lab welcomes three additional graduate students!
Amir, Farshad, and Kousha joins the lab, bringing with them diverse backrounds in mechanical engineering, health sciences, and biology. Welcome all!
Travis awarded a PRiME Graduate Fellowship. Congrats Travis!
Congratulations Travis!
Treetop trekking at this year’s lab retreat. Thanks to Ariel for organizing!
This year we head to Stouville, Ontario to try out treetop trekking. First lab retreat outside the city. Thanks to our undergrad Ariel for a fantastic job organizing the trip. This is turning into a tradition…
Congrats to Travis and Eric on winning multiple Faculty of Medicine OSOTF awards
Congratulations to Eric and Travis, well-deserved recognition for your hard work! You guys are rocking it! Celebrations are in order…
Leo gives an invited talk at the Max Bergmann symposium in Dresden, Germany
Leo gives an invited talk on the OrigamiFISH project at the Max Bergmann symposium in Dresden, Germany. Thanks to the organizers for the wonderful symposium and opportunity to share our work. Looking forward to this manuscript coming online soon.
Sachin walks us through his python probe design pipeline
Btw, thanks for making us install all the extra dependencies…
Celebrating Shana’s birthday with mini-golf tournament
Happy birthday Shana!
Getting lab’s first in vivo experiments underway!
Students learning how to work with mice. Thanks to our neighbor Julien for the kind help!
Meghan awarded the prestigious Vanier scholarship!
Congratulations to Meghan, well-deserved recognition! Looking forward to doing great science and many more celebrations with you!
We finally made it happen! Annual Lab Dinner at JUMP!
With the pandemic restrictions easing, the long awaited annual lab dinner, originally scheduled before the holidays, finally happened! What a great bunch to science with. Special thanks to Meghan for organizing!
Farewell to Stuti Joshi, who joins Pacific Biosciences in sunny California!
We celebrate Stuti on accepting the offer to join Pacific Biosciences in sunny San Diego, CA. Best of luck Stuti, be the future of long-read dna sequencing! You will be sorely missed by the lab!
Farewell to Abdulmateen, who joins Sunnybrook as research associate!
We bid farewell to Abdulmateen, who completed a MASc in the Chou lab. He will be joining the Schurmanns lab as a research associate before starting his PhD program in Fall 2022!
Congratulations to Abdulmateen and Stuti both for their successful MASc defense!
Abdulmateen and Stuti both successfully passed their MASc defenses! Both of them delivered a fantastic oral presentation and did terrific jobs on the Q&A. Congratulations to Abdulmateen and Stuti!!
Coffee addicts rejoice with arrival of nespresso
just in time for Xmas
Congratulations to Eric, Travis, and Wendy on acceptance of their review paper
A review paper on interfacing DNA nanotechnology with the immune system by Eric, Wendy, and Travis was accepted for publication in Advanced Healthcare Materials. Congrats team!
Meghan and Shana joins the lab as PhD students!
Welcome Meghan and Shana!
Lab BBQ at Hanlan’s Point, Toronto Center Islands.
Big thanks to our undergraduate researcher Jason Zhang for organizing! Check out the only photo we managed to take.
Wendy awarded a PRiME Postdoctoral Fellowship. Congrats Wendy!
Congratulations Wendy!
First lab social in the year of the global pandemic. We staying strong
First lab social of the year, it’s going to be virtual drinks & games night!
Ian joins the lab as a MITACS funded postdoct
Welcome Ian!
First Discord lab meeting
Adapting to the pandemic reality!
Happy birthday Abdulmateen!
Celebrating Abdulmateen’s birthday with some cupcakes
Thanks for the office decoration
I think this is a good sign?
First lab outing
Went to Snakes and Lattes for some boardgames
Floor social
We invited neighboring labs to join us for a Friday night food and games
Setting up the lab
Got our first equipment and getting ready to set up an experiment!
Chou lab begins
Welcome to the lab team STAR!
Want to join us?
Postdocs
Prospective postdoctoral scholars should send Leo an email and discuss your research interests ( include your CV and contact details of three references). It would be great if you can suggest potential topics you are interested in working on. You’re certainly not bound by this, it is merely a starting point of conversation.
Graduate students
We are always looking for highly motivated students with a passion for engineering biology and developing new biomedical technologies to join our mission-driven and dynamic work environment. Prospective students should send Leo an email to introduce yourself, what your interests are, along with your up-to-date CV and transcript.
Undergraduate students
We offer a limited number of fully-funded summer internship positions each year. Our lab can also sponsor undergraduate design competitions and thesis projects. Interested individuals are advised to email Leo early in the year to introduce yourself, your interests, along with your CV and transcript.